Current Activities

High Altitude Balloon Flights (EOSS)

No need to say more than check out Edge of Space Sciences home page.

Skywarn (storm chasing)

During the glorious days of spring and early summer, dozens of avid weather watchers here in Colorado spread about on the eastern plains to act as spotters and chasers of severe weather. The unlucky among us can be identified by our severely hail damaged vehicles. However, those folks are pretty rare. The Colorado Section of the Skywarn program holds a classes each spring to train new spotters and refresh the failing memories of old timers on the "safe" way to follow these storms. I'm usually out on "bad" days with my radios, camcorder, GPS, cameras and weather instruments.

If you live in the Denver area and wish to participate, listen to the 146.940 MHz repeater Tuesday nights at 8PM to the Colorado Events net. You'll hear announcements for registration to the weather class until around mid March when they actually begin. The classes used to be spread over a month and were somewhat hard to attend. Now, the class takes one FULL day (8am to 5pm), is usually held on a Saturday and gives you the full instruction in one quick massive dose. In the past a trip to the NWS  was usually arranged. However, that was when we had to attend class 2 nights a week for a month. It was thought that one of these classes could be used for a tour. However, now that the course is delivered in one class I'm not sure they are still doing an NWS tour. You'll just have to ask when you sign up for the class.

Satellite Tracking and Monitoring

Even before I got my ham ticket I was into tracking satellites. Now, it's more fun because I have the equipment to talk to and monitor the birds. 

I use a variety of tracking programs, but currently my favorites are STSPLUS (registered of course) and Quiktrak (likewise). Quiktrak by Bob McGuire (N4HY) can be obtained from AMSAT. For more info on that you might try the AMSAT Home Page. STSPLUS by David Ransom can be found in the NASA Spacelink File Libraries. It's usually called SOPxxxx.ZIP where the xxxx refers to the version number. That number will comprise of a year and week of release, for instance the current version as of this writing is SOP9445.ZIP. that's the 45 week of 1994. Sometimes the program is divided into two files then identified as SOP9445a.ZIP and SOP9445b.ZIP. This program is FANTASTIC at following shuttle missions but, it tracks multiple targets, has a variety of visual projections and is generally much fun to work with.

I also write a program that manages LARGE two line element files, Element Manager. It's available at http://www.elementmanager.com. It has rudimentary tracking capabilities, but is primarily intended for use as a sorter and selector and maintainer of large batches of two line element sets. The tracking module for this program really only works accurately on LEO satellites. I strongly recommend here and all over the Element Manager Site that you get a "REAL" tracking program if you rely on predictions to make contacts. The tracking module was only included in EM as another tool in viewing orbits and their properties, not as a spot on accurate tracking program.